Friday, September 30, 2016

I spent a lovely day wandering around Washington Zoo, then got very bored in an airport due to a flight delay. I am now going to burden you with the result of those two events. Looking at pictures of animals and thinking about books that maybe should have been written...

The Pig Easy

The Silence Of The Lamas

Don Quixote

Don Goatote

The Pelican Brief

One flew over the err... I am sure there must be something here...Jeff? EvKa?

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Michael - Thursday

CITES stands for quite a mouthful - Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and
the 17th plenary meeting of the participants is taking place right
now in Johannesburg. With a few not very important exceptions, every country in
the United Nations is a signatory. The aim is a laudable one: to control trade in
species which are in danger of extinction in the wild, or which may become
endangered if exploitation is not strictly controlled. Most of the 35,000
species on one of the three CITES appendices are plants, but about 10% are
animals and birds. As one would expect, they have the highest profile. And while
most of the 35,000 are facing extinction due to the loss of habitat, global
warming, and overutilization, again the highest profile species are the victims
of baseless beliefs, greed, thoughtlessness, and politics. (Disclaimer: Any similarity
between this and the US presidential election is purely coincidental.)

Umm...now what?

Of course it’s the big names that make the running—elephants,
tigers, rhinos. But what of the smaller species which are just as valuable and
even more vulnerable? Who has a thought for the pangolins—fascinating creatures
with chitinous protective scales, who roll up into a solid ball when threatened
and make a good living cleaning up ants and termites? Why would anyone
persecute these interesting characters? Unfortunately they, and especially
their scales, have a reputation for medicinal properties in the East. Estimates
suggest that perhaps a million individuals have been illegally killed over the past decade
for meat and the use of scales and body parts. Yesterday CITES 17 agreed to
move all pangolin species (Asian and African) to Appendix 1, the highest level
of protection and banning all international trade. I’d be even more thrilled about
that if some of the other occupants of that Appendix were doing better; all
species of rhino are on that list, for example.

Another example is the African Grey Parrot, down to perhaps
1% of previous numbers in the wild. Your pet store owner will tell you their specimens are
all bred from domestic stock and hopefully that will be true. But many are snared in
the wild, wrapped in muslin bags, and smuggled out of Africa with plenty dying
along the way. They, too, are to move to the highest endangered level.

The Guardian newspaper has released a series of in depth
articles on endangered species and illegal trade to coincide with the CITES
meeting. See this article for example.

Then the politics. China is a signatory and appears to take
its responsibilities seriously. But
there's ample evidence that tigers are bred for body parts in that country
although that is against their own law. China reacted angrily to the
accusation, pointing out that CITES is about international trade and so what it does internally is nobody else’s
business. What’s more, they point out, the breeding program actually enhances
the tiger gene pool so that it helps the species overall.

There are also disagreements about elephants. Botswana,
South Africa, and Zimbabwe have the largest populations (in that order of total
numbers) and they asked for a process to be initiated to lead to an orderly
sale of legally stock-piled ivory, perhaps through a once-off auction as has
been done before. The money could then be used for conservation of other
species, particularly rhino. This was vehemently opposed by Kenya which has
seen their elephant numbers decline significantly due to poaching. Kenya won
the day with more than 70% of the delegates rejecting even a discussion of a
future process. One delegate is said to have remarked bitterly that if Kenya
cleaned up its act—particularly controlling ivory smuggling through Mombasa—then its elephant populations might
be growing the way the southern African ones were.

As for the rhinos, the furor carries on. There are many
good arguments on all sides, but CITES will certainly continue the ban on the rhino
horn trade. Having just lost a pregnant female in our small game reserve in
broad daylight despite our anti-poaching team, technology, and the hard work of our
people, to say nothing of the efforts of the government and CITES, I’m now
convinced there’s no option but to regularly and painlessly remove the horn and
destroy it on the spot. The game reserves that have done that have lost
essentially no animals since they started the policy. If the day comes when the
peoples of China and Vietnam no longer believe that the horn is anything more
than solidified animal hair, they can be allowed to grow back. At least we’ll
have some rhinos left for the horns to grow back on.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Wow what a gift! My friend, Maureen in Portland, just sent me this wonderful 1948 map of Paris by arrondissement along with a Metro ticket. Hmm wonder if I can use it in November?

After Bouchercon, the wonderful agent who represents Lisa, myself and Duane Swerzyinski invited us for dinner. A cajun prawn dish and home made cookies.

Then on to Minneapolis/St. Paul for a library talk. Pat Frovart, who I and many people love, took me to lunch and her 'old' bookstore, Once Upon a Crime, now run by Devin and Jessie. Pat, who owned Once Upon a Crime bookstore for years with her husband, Gary, were honored with the Raven award at the Edgars. Gary, passed away a few months ago, and is deeply missed by the mystery community. Just want to say Pat is doing well, and as she says 'Now I've got time to read for pleasure, not work"

Wow what a gift! My friend, Maureen in Portland, just sent me this wonderful 1948 map of Paris by arrondissement along with a Metro ticket. Hmm wonder if I can use it in November?

After Bouchercon, the wonderful agent who represents Lisa, myself and Duane Swerzyinski invited us for dinner. A cajun prawn dish and home made cookies.

Then on to Minneapolis/St. Paul for a library talk. Pat Frovart, who I and many people love, took me to lunch and her 'old' bookstore, Once Upon a Crime, now run by Devin and Jessie. Pat, who owned Once Upon a Crime bookstore for years with her husband, Gary, were honored with the Raven award at the Edgars. Gary, passed away a few months ago, and is deeply missed by the mystery community. Just want to say Pat is doing well, and as she says 'Now I've got time to read for pleasure, not work"

That lead sentence requires a digression.A lot of what I am about to say will come
across as implausible.I am worried that
you won’t take it as the unvarnished truth.You see, I have a tendency to wax enthusiastic.More than one person has taken the passion
with which I speak as over-dramatization.Not to say exaggeration.I feel
the need, before I go ahead with my story to let you know that, though I am
reporting facts, you may find all this a bit over the top.You
will make up your own mind, but in my own defense, I can offer this possible
extenuating circumstance: It is quite
likely that I was born exuberant, evidence of which is visible in this
photograph taken when I was just shy of fourteen months old—too young to put on
airs.

That said, here is what happened to the grown-up version of
that kid in the days following Bouchercon 2016.

I left NOLA on the legendary City of New Orleans.Contrary to Arlo Gurthrie, I traveled north,
and after six hours descended at Greenwood, Mississippi on the banks of the
Yazoo

It was not my first trip there.One of the most astonishing chapters is my
implausible life deals with my unlikely relationship with the Viking Range
Corporation, which is headquartered in Greenwood.It started in 1985, when David and I were
renovating the kitchen in our house on Waverly Place.Enthusiastic cook that I am, I wanted a
serious stove for my new kitchen.It took
three months of researching and cajoling before an architect friend came up
with the Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a flyer about a product called the
Viking range.The page showed a fuzzy
drawing and listed specifications that matched my wants.At the bottom was an address in Greenwood.I called the 800 number and spoke to Fred
Carl.I thought he was a salesman. In the course of placing my order, I advised
Mr. Carl that his company needed to make itself better known.

Little did I know that Fred Carl was the founder of Viking
and the designer of the first-ever professional range for the home.At the moment I called, discouraged after two
years of trying to get his idea off the ground, Fred Carl was contemplating
giving up to the whole effort as a pipe dream.No one believed him that there would be a market for such a thing.My call provided him with a story to tell: a
woman from New York had placed an order and was sending him a deposit check.

In the course of the next thirty-plus years, during which
Fred’s invention revolutionized the kitchen appliance industry, I have from
time to time, described myself as the “patron saint” of the Viking Range
Corporation.I performed no miracles.But Fred and Margaret Carl have always
treated me as if I played a pivotal role in the birth of their business.

On my second trip to Greenwood, that treatment continued.

One of my Viking friends—Dale Persons—arranged for me and my
friend Marie Moore to do a signing at the lovely local store—Turnrow Books.Marie is the author of a wonderful series of
travel mysteries, more about which here.With both of us writing about exotic locations and sharing a warm
friendship, we made a good team.The
event on Monday evening was a huge success.An SRO crowd and many books signed.

Monday afternoon was what put me into Alice-in-Wonderland
territory.Viking’s president, Kevin
Brown, invited me to tour the plant.Some of Viking’s employees who had been there from the beginning turned
out to greet me.Kevin took us around and
pointed out several improvements in production and product testing instituted
since my last visit ten years ago.

Marie and I found fodder for mystery writers in some of the
equipment—like the laser beam that can cut steel as if it were butter, right
out of the final scene of a James Bond flick.We particularly like the oven that bonds porcelain to steel.What a way to turn a dead body to ashes.There are even hooks on which to hang a
corpse!

It was fascinating.

Then Kevin invited me to the center of the factory floor
where he showed me the latest, top-of-the-line 48-inch range with a big blue
bow on it.“This is your stove,” he
said.I said, “No, my stove is not
exactly like this.” And I proceeded to describe the differences between the one
in my kitchen and the one before us.It
took Kevin three tries, and Marie and Dale chiming in, before he got it through
to me.He was giving me that gorgeous
thing as a gift!

I remain astonished.

The next morning, Marie and I traveled north.She gave me a tour of her alma mater, Ole
Miss in Oxford, and I enjoyed a wonderful stay at her home in Holly Springs,
where she introduced me to her husband and some of her friends.Believe me.Truly. Southern hospitality is not just a myth.